Subsistence economics: Freedom from the marketplace

Abstract

Conventional market economic accounting techniques tend to accord high values to human‐made goods that benefit the individual, and accord little value to the works of nature that primarily benefit the public. One of the axioms that forest economics students learn is that the land itself has zero value; idle acres are wasted. Thus, subsistence and other in situ land values are grossly undervalued, and pressure for development of land for commodity production almost always prevails. Unpublished data from the U.S. Forest Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Cooperative subsistence studies have been used to illustrate adverse impacts to community stability and economic well‐being due to biases inherent in applying market‐derived methodologies to evaluate mixed economies. Some basic tenets are proposed to improve economics‐based resource allocation decisions in Alaska and other developing economies around the world.

Key words:

• commodity
• community stability
• economics
• exchange‐value
• intangible values
• market
• sharing
• subsistence
• use‐value
• worth